Vehicle service providers have employed various schemes in order to provide a pleasant ride experience to their passengers. One of these schemes is an in-vehicle entertainment system, where the passengers can choose to play a multimedia file of their choice for the duration of the ride. The in-vehicle entertainment systems generally include a vehicle head unit, inbuilt speakers, and a display device. The vehicle head unit controls a playback of the multimedia file through the inbuilt speakers and the display device of the in-vehicle entertainment system. The display device may be internal to the vehicle, i.e., a display screen, tablet, and the like, or external to the vehicle, i.e., a passenger's phone could be configured as the display device.
A multimedia file includes an audio component and a video component. The audio component and the video component may be rendered simultaneously on various devices of the in-vehicle entertainment system. In an example, the vehicle head unit may render the audio component, whereas the video component may be rendered by way of the display device. Thus, the vehicle head unit may render the audio component by way of its multimedia player, hereinafter “first multimedia player” and the display device may render the video component by way of its multimedia player, hereinafter “second multimedia player”.
The first and second multimedia players derive their processing clocks, hereinafter “first and second clocks”, from the processing clocks of the vehicle head unit and the display device, respectively. In order to ensure a smooth playback of the multimedia file, the first and second clocks need to be synchronized. However, a clock rate of the first clock may be different as compared to a clock rate of the second clock. For example, the first clock may have a clock rate of 1 gigahertz (GHz) while the second clock may have a clock rate of 1.2 GHz. Thus, the first and second multimedia players will have clock rates of 1 GHz and 1.2 GHz, respectively. As the first and second multimedia players play the audio and video components simultaneously, the difference in the clock rates will affect the playback of the multimedia file thus causing the audio and video components to be de-synchronized. De-synchronization of the audio and video components may cause lip-sync′ error, since the video component will be rendered at a faster rate as compared to the audio component. This will lead to an unpleasant travel experience for the passengers.
Hence, it would be advantageous to have an in-vehicle entertainment system that synchronizes the playback of the video component and the audio component across multiple devices having dissimilar processor clock rates.